Retrospection
by Paradox Child
Summary: After all this time, I could accept that it was doomed before it had begun, but one last question still lingered in my mind.


**A/N: Random drabble I excreted in two hours. Sorry for taking so long with SN, next chapter up soon**.

* * *

If you can hear me, I'm already long gone. No, I don't know how that's even possible, but that's just the way things work around here. Nobody ever finds out anything until after the person in question has vanished. And that includes Nobodies. Nobodies like me, who hardly give a damn about the ails of the rest of the world--excuse me, _worlds-- _and whose only goal in life is to make that one special person they thought they'd never meet as happy as they possibly can. Did it work? Maybe. I hope so. I can't exactly tell or anything, because I'm already gone and didn't have a chance to find out before I left.

Where exactly is 'gone'? Not sure myself. All I know is watching that black smoke rise off my body until there was nothing left, and suddenly there was an explosion of colour zooming past me from all directions. And then, in the blink of an eye, I was here. 'Here' is the clock tower in twilight town; only, I know it's not real 'cause the colours are all wrong. Maybe DiZ saved me, maybe he put me into that weird machine like he put you into, after it became apparent you needed to disappear for some ridiculous reason or another.

Of course, I hated him for it.

I hated anyone and anything that took you away from me. I've loved you since I first met you, ya know-- not mushy love, though, in the beginning, anyway. Back then, it was the kind of love you had for someone because somehow you knew that they were just like you, all broken and clumsily repaired and feeling empty 'cause all the cracks allow everything to just flow on out. In the beginning, that love was an understanding kind of love. But that changed. I'm sure you know that, though. You'd kind of have to stoop to Sora's naivety level to think things were still platonic between us after the hours upon hours of--

You know, on second thought, not even Sora would be sitting in the dark after _that._

I didn't know him well, but I watched him. I watched him relentlessly, especially after you went missing for the final time, and I couldn't find you anymore. He reminded me of you. It was strange. Somewhere along the way I got it into my head that Sora held the key to finding you again. I couldn't go to Sora; those were orders from the top, and while I liked worming and deceiving my way about my other colleagues, I wasn't stupid enough to piss off old man Xemnas, considering he already seemed to think the mayhem at Oblivion was all my fault. So I formulated a plan to get Sora to come to me instead. I opened a portal to his home world and kidnapped that girl Kairi. If he heard she'd been kidnapped by the rogue and handsome redhead, he'd surely come running, right?

Well, suffice to say, things didn't go according to plan, 'cause everything backfired. Everything. And in the end, I was blatantly opposing the Organization as I helped Sora fight through the Betwixt and Between, because I was hopelessly clinging to anything and everything that reminded me of you.

The way you laughed, the way you smiled, the way ya glared at me when I made a lewd or suggestive comment. That look of serenity that crossed your face as you listened to your iPod on rainy days, your OCD-like tendency to keep your—our—bed and the surrounding area spotlessly clean, the way your hair fell flat against your skull when wet. How you smelled after a shower, the way your lips tasted, and how absolutely fucking_ beautiful _you were when we made love.

I ached for it. So badly that I ended up destroying myself.

You.. You were my everything. And then you were taken away. No goodbyes, no last kiss, nothing. Just a fight. A terrible, terrible fight. I'll never forgive myself for hurting you. But it numbed my pain for a while, and I think at that point, it was a needed painkiller.

Christ, that's possibly the most morbidly selfish thing I've ever heard myself say. And it doesn't even make much sense.

But I suppose nothing I did would have. I was a man plagued by desperation, and anyone who's anyone or no one knows that a man in that state is liable to do anything.

I'm surprised I didn't self-destruct sooner.

But... Did I? Did I make you happy before you left? Before that other you-that-was-completely-not-you took over? Was I able to make you smile? Was I able to make you laugh? Was I good enough for you? If... If I had even a moment to talk to you again, the first thing out of my mouth would have been "I'm sorry." For what? A lot of things. It was my fault it all ended up this way, after all, 'cause underneath my tough exterior I'm just a screw-up who's trying to pass off his mistakes as things he'd intended on happening. My shell broke the night you left when I begged you to reconsider, and again when I fought you in the mansion basement. Not that I'd ever had it up around you in the first place. When you find something as immediately as precious as you had been to me, you don't bother throwing up walls just to keep your self safe from the what-ifs. In retrospect, someone might think me a fool for it. But they don't know what you gave me. They never will.

If I had a few more moments to spare, I think the next thing out of my mouth would be "forgive me." At the very end, in those last seconds, I realized what had been going on the entire time, and why I thought Sora could point me to you. I couldn't live with my non-self for the rest of... well, however long I have here without knowing you'd forgiven me for pushing for something that was meant to die anyway. They say love is eternal, but it's pretty damn hard to agree with that when your lover stops being your lover and starts being someone else.

And then, if everything was perfect—absolutely fucking perfect—I'd tell you what we'd both been refraining from telling each other all along. "I love you." And I do. I love you so much that I went to the ends of many worlds looking for you. I stalked a brown-haired boy and kidnapped his would-be girlfriend. I turned by back on the Organization to protect you, and was cut down in a last-ditch effort to make everything right again. I don't know if it worked. Like I said, I'm gone now. And I know damn well I ain't coming back.

...

And then, after I was finished with that, I'd look into your big baby blues, searching for the answer to the one question I'd left unasked after all this time, through all these missions and the cold winter nights, through the search for hearts and the dismantling of the Organization, through the stubbornness and embarrassment and everything in between. It was the desperately-needed absolution of a man shattered by a doomed romance.

Did you love me, too?


End file.
